Using Xdebug with Wordpress on App Service Linux

3 minute read | By Anthony Salemo

This post will cover how to generate Xdebug profiles on a Wordpress - App Service Linux (marketplace) image

Overview

This post is regarding Wordpress on App Service Linux - which is created through the Azure Portal using the Marketplace. A quickstart on how to create this can be found here - Quickstarts - Deploy Wordpress

This covers configuring Xdebug in situations where it’s deemed that a profile is needed. Such as possibly a high CPU, high memory or a slowness scenario where a plugin or peice of vendor code is thought to be of issue.

For general PHP performance or profiling, review: PHP performance: Profilers and debuggers for PHP applications on App Service Linux

You can use some tools like the below to isolate or possibly even find the problem before needing to enable a profiler:

  • Diagnose and Solve Problems - This includes various site detectors for application crashes, logs (if enabled through Appp Service Logs), CPU, Memory, slowness, restarts, and others
  • Metrics - This blade shows more real-time information as opposed to Diagnose and Solve - but is specific to Metrics, and not other lifecycle events like container crashes or stdout/err
  • For WordPress specific cases, disabling plugins and/or reverting to a Wordress-basic theme, in case a custom theme is being used, can also be done - to rule issues out
    • The new Wordpress on App Service Linux experience includes a lot of performance enhancements out of the box, or, is configurable - however, this can be reviewed for a recap - WordPress Best Practices for Performance

NOTE: Although you can run your own custom images with Wordress, or, technically host Wordpress on PHP “Blessed Images” (not recommeded), this post here may not work 1:1 with said hosting set up, due to differences in images.

Configure Xdebug

By default, Xdebug and it’s shared library is already installed in the Wordpress on App Service marketplace image. However, it’s associated xdebug.ini file under /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d is disabled:

53d2fc4f13fd:/usr/local/etc/php/conf.d# cat xdebug.ini 
;Default is turn off.
;zend_extension=/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20180731/xdebug.so
;xdebug.remote_enable = on
;xdebug.profiler_output_dir = /home/xdebug
;xdebug.remote_autostart = off

Which, in production scenarios, you’d typically want profilers disabled.

If we look under the PHP extension directory (which as of writing this points to /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20220829) we can confirm the shared library location:

3fe9bbcd50e6:/home# ls /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20220829 | grep "xdebug"
xdebug.so

Since the library is there, let’s configure it for our use:

  1. Create a directory for our custom .ini file under something like /home/ini - run the command mkdir /home/ini
  2. In /home/ini, create an xdebug.ini with the following content:
zend_extension=/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20220829/xdebug.so
xdebug.remote_autostart=off
xdebug.output_dir=/home/LogFiles
xdebug.mode=profile
xdebug.start_with_request=trigger

NOTE: Make sure zend_extension points to the correct location. Double check this with pear config-show and look at the “PHP extension directory” value

  1. Add an App Setting with a key of PHP_INI_SCAN_DIR and value of /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d:/home/ini

At this point, Xdebug should be set up to generate profiles

Generate profiles

To generate a profile, navigate to whichever path is needing to be profiled and append /?XDEBUG_PROFILE=1. Such as yoursite.azurewebsites.net/?XDEBUG_PROFILE=1.

This will now generate a cachegrind.out.*.gz file under /home/LogFiles.

4c6c9a0fa27f:/home/LogFiles# ls | grep "cachegrind"
cachegrind.out.248.gz

You can download these cachegrind files through an FTP client, Kudu’s /newui endpoint, or others. After downloaded, review PHP performance: Profilers and debuggers for PHP applications on App Service Linux - Reviewing XDebug profiles, ideally using the VSCode option or QcacheGrind.

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